Hitherto, there have been proposed drive assist systems that acquire various information related to travel of a vehicle such as road information obtained from map data and the current position specified by a GPS, a vehicle speed sensor, etc. to provide drive assistance by providing notice to a driver and helping the driver in driving. As one of such drive assist systems, there has been proposed a system that provides drive assistance in decelerating a vehicle such that the vehicle can decelerate to an appropriate speed at an appropriate degree of deceleration, particularly at a location at which the vehicle decelerates such as before an intersection or a curve.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2011-227833 (JP 2011-227833 A) discloses a technology for specifying a travel pattern of a vehicle by using a travel history (specifically, the timing to apply a brake) of the vehicle in the past as learning data to provide drive assistance such as deceleration guidance such that the vehicle travels along the specified travel pattern.